Photo Albums

Noteworthy Photography

Burning Flags PressThe website of Glen E. Friedman. Renowned for both his work with musicians like Fugazi, Minor Threat, Public Enemy, the Beastie Boys, Slayer (and many, many more) as well as his groundbreaking documentation of the burgeoning skateboard phenomenon in the late `70's, Glen has been privvy to (and has summarily captured on film) some of the coolest stuff ever. He's also an incredibly insightful and nice guy to boot.

SoHo Blues - Photography by Allan TannenbaumAllan Tannenbaum is a local photographer who has been everywhere and shot everything, from members of Blondie hanging out at the Mudd Club through the collapsing towers of the World Trade Center on September 11th. You could spend hours on this site, and I have.

Robert Otter PhotographsAmazing vintage photographs of New York City, specifically my own neighborhood, Greenwich Village.

Big Laughs

The Weblog of Spumco's John K.The weblog of cartoonist John Kricfalusi, crazed mind and frantic pencil behind the original "Ren & Stimpy," as well as "The Goddamn George Liquor Show." Surreal, unapologetic, uncompromising genius.

October 02, 2010

Back to the Subway Inn

I should point out at the top of this post that as much as I would have liked to, I did not take the above photo. Rather, I brazenly appropriated it from Broke-Ass Stuart's Goddamn Website.

Sometime in the early 1990s, I remember going to the Subway Inn on East 60th Street just off Lexington Avenue (convenient staggering distance from the entrance to the 6 train) with my friends Rob, Tim and Ed and marveling at its endearingly gritty interior and old school New York dive bar sensibility, looking remarkably like a location from a Martin Scorsese opus (which it very well may have been at one point or another). Its regular clientele were career drinkers, not comparatively well-scrubbed and insufferable dilettantes like ourselves. The gents at the bar at the Subway had very possibly been there all day, whereas we were clearly just passing through. Feeling like tourists in our own city, we respected our place in that particular food chain, supped up our many beers and shuffled back out into the night, invariably headed south to louder, younger venues.

In 1998 or so, I stopped into the Subway Inn again, this time with the woman who'd later become my wife. We shared a booth in the back and stared moony-eyed at each other over a couple of drinks while an ancient juke box played doo-wop tunes from a bygone age late into the evening. It seemed once again like a scene out of a film. The Subway Inn was this strange little oasis of endearingly shoddy character in an otherwise bland neighborhood (near the southern border of the Upper East Side), perched diminutively in the shadow of Bloomingdale's palace of posh.

Prior to last night, the last time I'd set foot in the Subway was with my friend John Flowers in 2005. In was a rainy summer afternoon and we were putting away some pints in preparation to witness Devo play in Central Park later in the day. While much of the city had changed rather significantly by this point, the Subway Inn had somehow retained its same shady veneer and un-fussed integrity.

Last night, I was to attend my 25th high school reunion at a restaurant in midtown. Being that it didn't make sense to go all the way home after work, my wife and I made a plan to simply meet back at the Subway Inn around 7pm for a couple of "secret drinks" (as we used to call them) before going to my reunion. So after leaving my office in the arguable hotbed of Satanism in Rockefeller Center, I strolled over to East 60th street in the cooling October evening.

I could hear it a half-a-block away. From within the interior of the Subway Inn came a thunderous, pulsing beat. Stepping inside was an all-sensory assault. Three massive televisions were broadcasting three different sporting events as I narrowly squeezed between the crowd at the bar and the (newly-installed?) massive digital jukebox, playing Rihanna's cloyingly puerile "Rudeboy" at an amplification that would make even Motorhead arch a warty eyebrow. The place was packed, loud and, well, annoying. I quickly downed a Budweiser and decided I couldn't take it. I squeezed back out the door to wait for my wife outside. As I was standing under that iconic neon light, an older gentleman wearingly shuffled by me and into the Subway Inn. Two seconds later, he came back out. "It's insanely loud in there," he muttered as he passed me, "I don't know how you stand it."

Comments

I don't think you can expect someplace to remain exactly the same for decades, particularly in this city, and you might be getting old if that really is your expectation.

What the Subway Inn consistently delivers is a lower level of general douchiness than the typical bar in Manhattan. Right now the douchiness level of the typical Manhattan bar is going through the roof, so its increased at this place too. And its still a better bar than just about anyplace else in Manhattan. You wouldn't believe what it is like in some other places.

Also, like all of these places you have to go at the right time. Jeremaih has a great post at Vanishing New York about McSorley's, which sounds great if you come at the right time. At the wrong time, the place is awful.

"I don't think you can expect someplace to remain exactly the same for decades, particularly in this city, and you might be getting old if that really is your expectation."

I guess I'm getting reeeeeeally old. A lot of places used to stay exactly the same for decades and nobody thought it was a big deal. What's happening now is a recent phenomenon in its scale and breadth. And it sucks.